With the early start we had this year, this newsletter finds us well into the first quarter of learning! We started this school year with many new staff members and welcomed quite a few new families to our Pomona School Community. Children in the 4th and 5th grades have taken the i-Ready assessment and those in grades K-3 were assessed using DIBELS. These assessments help teachers to know where students’ strengths lie in the area of Reading. In addition, many children were given the AVMR math screener to determine the same information in math. With these beginning of the year assessments behind us, we now have the data necessary to help us best meet the needs of our learners. The teachers are working hard to develop goals specific to our school that will guide the work that we do to support learners this year. Strengthening our Professional Learning Community at Pomona continues to be a top priority. As always, the Wednesday afternoon work we do together is focused around the goal of continual improvement for all learners and the goal is to help support our staff with their individual learning needs.

This year, we will continue to focus on growing our brains using the “Habits of Mind” and growth minded feedback with our learners. These qualities will help our children to be more successful learners and people and is essential in building our school’s foundation for Performance Based Learning (PBL). They include things like: thinking and communicating clearly, persisting, thinking flexibly, managing impulsivity, listening with understanding and empathy, using humor, striving for accuracy, etc. While all learners will be exposed to all habits of mind, each grade level specifically focuses on two. Please ask your child about these habits!

In an effort to reach out to more families, we will be using various forms of social media to share the great work by our learners and staff! If you haven’t done so already, I would encourage you to “Like” our Pomona Elementary School Facebook page. We will also be on Instagram shortly and would encourage you to “follow us” there as well. In addition, as many of you have shared in the past, our Pomona Elementary School website is a great source of up to date information about our school happenings!